They Said it Couldn't Be Done

It's every sheetfed salesperson's dream: An ad agency client wants to know if your shop can produce a high-profile piece for a Big Three car company. Budget? Virtually a blank check. Time frame is wide open. Their only question: Can you execute it? The print buyer shares some of the proposed specs with you:

• 12 colors: CMYK plus five spots, dull and gloss varnish.
• Seven-color cover plus yellow foil-embossed stamp.
• 36-page body plus 10 eight-page "mini-books" glued inside.
• Uncoated fly leaves print metallic silver and black.
• Quantity: 10,000.
• Trim size: oblong, 7¾″×15¼″.
• Hard cover; perfect bound.

A dream job, except for the binding part. Even after ruling out perfect binding, "not many binderies would touch the odd-sized pages," admits Hansford Ray, VP of national sales at Williamson Printing in Dallas, the fortunate printer who landed the job—and with its successful production, landed one of the most prestigious awards bestowed during Graph Expo at PIA/GATF's annual Premier Print Awards.

At Williamson's maquiladora facility, south of the border in Mexico, employees hand-gathered all 360,000 body pages, side-stitched them and sewed more than 10,000 sets. "From there," Ray explains, "the books were shipped to Phoenix, where Roswell Bookbinding wrapped the covers [printed on 120-lb. Yupo Cover] in 50-lb. railroad board and added the end pages."

The elaborate project began five months earlier, when Ford Motor Co. challenged Latcha + Associates, Livonia, MI, to design an elegant book for qualified buyers of the 2005 Ford GT "supercar." The sleek, 500-hp GT, which commands a high-performance price tag of nearly $150,000, was hyped in a ground race against a jet aircraft (the GT won at 170 mph.). On Feb. 1, Super Bowl Sunday, the GT made its television commercial debut. With the creative precedent set, David Latcha, Jennifer Wallace and their team carried the hand-off into print land.

Once on press, the drama continued. "We just couldn't get the covers dull enough to match the designer's vision," Ray says. Yupo, the synthetic paper-maker, obligingly provided the services of its chemist, who created a coating to dull down the paper's surface. Because the coating was considered a hazardous material and couldn't be flown on a plane, Williamson had to pay for two drivers to safely transport the secret formula from Yupo's Wisconsin lab to Dallas.

The newly formulated varnish paved the road to victory for the coffee-table book, which was printed on two Heidelberg Speedmaster presses (11- and 12-unit) and ended up in the winner's circle at this year's Premier Print Awards. The obvious category? "They Said It Couldn't Be Done." The trophy (a.k.a. "Benny" because it's a statuette of Benjamin Franklin) was one of 14 that Williamson took home.